Undine (Prokofiev)

Undine (also Undina ) is an opera by Sergei Prokofjew . The libretto was written by the poet AM Kilštedt based on the fairy tale Undine (1811) by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . Prokofiev's first opera, composed between 1904 and 1907, remained unpublished.

Undine , along with Maddalena, is one of Prokofiev's operas written at the St. Petersburg Conservatory ; it remained unfinished. Only the piano manuscript of the second and third act remained. Influenced by the romantic currents of music, the student Prokofiev set a subject to music that had attracted the great Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov before him . The music was therefore very much influenced by the young composer's role models, alongside Tchaikovsky by Edvard Grieg and Richard Wagner . “The music of this opera documents the level at which the language of the young composer was in 1907,” wrote Natalja Swankina, “which were important features for the future: the complexity, the chromatization of the fabric, which was often caused by the contrivances of developed voice guidance as well as being 'justified' by shifting across semitones. With the contrast between simplicity and complexity, diatonic and chromatic , the most important principle of Prokofiev's work becomes visible, which gives his style the monolithic unity - the principle of the opposition of Poles, the interaction of antitheses. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Natalia Swankina: The operas Prokofiev incurred in the conservatory . In: International Music Festival - Sergei Prokofiev and contemporary music from the Soviet Union. Program book. City of Duisburg, 1990, p. 148 ff.